I’m so very fortunate to be blessed with grandchildren. One of my weaving goals to create something special for each of my grandchildren. You know, an heirloom item that, hopefully, they’ll cherish throughout their lives. I’ve woven each a baby blanket, a stuffy from handwoven fabric and several other items in a color scheme their mothers chose. They even have handwoven burp cloths. As nice as these items are, I was looking for something unique. After watching Jane Stafford’s (Jane Stafford’s School of Weaving) episode on name drafting, well, the wheels in my mind kept turning.
What is Name Drafting?
Name drafting is a way to create a unique motif from a series of letters. You can embed “hidden messages” into your weaving (in a way). To name draft, every letter in a message, or in my case, the name of my grandchild is assigned a harness. We’ll be weaving this motif using the overshot structure. The first step is to assign each letter a shaft number. This will be a 4 shaft pattern.
My grandson’s full name is Archie Edward Nelson. Here’s a picture of this cutie with my daughter Lizzie.
So, each letter of his name was assigned a shaft. We started with the following:
To create the motif, we need to follow the twill circle. To maintain the circle a 1 must be next to a 4 or 2, a 2 next to a 1 or 3, a 3 next to a 2 or 4 and the 4 next to a 1 or 3 (see the little circle graphic in the picture below). In other words, you cannot have a double number (like the 1’s in the “I”, “E” and “E”) or a gap in the circle like a 4 next to a 2 or a 1 next to a 3. When this occurs, you need add a shaft number into the draft. You have a choice between two and your choice affects the motif so you can experiment with your options..
After this point, I put threading pattern into my weaving software. The image was flipped to create the symmetrical motif.
The tie up is basically a simple twill tie up. Take a peek at 4 shafts and 4 treadles in this tie up. It’s just the twill tie up. Shafts 5 and 6 and treadles 5 and 6 allow me to add plain weave to the top, bottom and sides of my project. I’m planning on framing this piece so I’ll need fabric on the sides to fold in.
Figuring out the treadling for overshot is a little tricky. Since this post is not intended to be a full on instructional post on how to name draft, I suggest watching Jane’s lesson in Season 6 Episode 5. If you are not a member, I believe she still offers a trial period. The November/December 1997 issue of Handwoven also provides a tutorial on how to name draft. Here’s a close up of the single motif.
For the project, I replicated the motif five times alternating blue and white in the warp. Each motif was separated by 2 pics of plain weave in gold. There was about an inch of plain weave on the sides, top and bottom which allows me to fold it over for framing.
Before weaving, I did quite a bit of sampling with different fibers and setts. I settled on 8/2 cotton for the warp and 16/2 mercerized cotton for the tabby weft and 5/2 mercerized cotton for pattern weft sett at 18 epi. With Archie’s project, I used a natural for warp and tabby weft and dyed the pattern weft Kilt Green (ProChem Dyes). This way the project will coordinate with his baby blanket. While weaving I had to be extra careful to weave at 18 ppi so the motif remained square. Here’s a picture of the final cloth after washing (needs a good iron).
My plan is to take this to our local framing store. I’ll be sure to post a picture once it’s framed and hanging in Archie’s room. Now to get working on Margot Elizabeth Hearth and Eleanor Julianne Hearth.
